TEL AVIV, April 7: Palestinian President Yasser Arafat on Wednesday brushed off recent threats to his life by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as his Palestinian Authority warned Washington not to interfere in its internal affairs.
In Washington, the US State Department warned off any move to bring Hamas into the political fold after Yasser Arafat himself told a German magazine that he wants Hamas to be integrated into the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erakat reacted by saying that "the intra-Palestinian dialogue should be held in the national interest and it is an internal Palestinian affair".
"I am not afraid of Sharon's threats," the 74-year-old Arafat told the top-selling Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot.
"Do you know me as a person who is afraid? I am afraid only of Allah. "This is not the first time that Sharon has threatened my life. He forgets that he also threatened me in Beirut," added Arafat in reference to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, where his Palestine Liberation Organisation was then based.
Mr Sharon was slapped down last week by his allies in Washington after giving an interview in which he warned that Arafat was a "marked man". But the Israeli premier repeated his threat Monday, saying his arch-foe was to blame for "the murder of Jews for decades" and that "all those who kill Jews or push for the killing of Jews or Israeli citizens deserve to die."
Arafat told the paper he was opposed to the killing of Israeli civilians. "I am against killing civilians. I have said this to my people on several occasions, in my name and in the name of the leadership: 'stop killing civilians.'"
Since coming to power in 2001, Sharon has boycotted Arafat and his troops have effectively kept the Palestinian leader under house arrest for more than two years. Saying that he sees no partner for peace among the Palestinian leadership, Sharon pledged last December to implement his own unilateral measures to end the conflict, including a pull-out from the Gaza Strip. -AFP
